Endangered Virgins

With a terribly apt handle such as Harry Huevos, you can imagine that sexual intercourse never actually scared the randy fellow. Even as a little eight-year-old boy.

Though there might be a bit of exaggeration on his part - macho Latin bluster and all that, Harry claims that nine is the age that he first delved into the sensual mysteries of womanhood so to speak.

Yes, nine.

Even as Harry proudly announced that outrageous proclamation, my shell-shocked mind goggled over the horrifying idea that a bunch of libidinous primary schoolkids gleefully rolling about the sandbox could actually be discovering the carnal uses of the pee pee and the tatas. Seriously, eek and eew. Though I encourage education in all its various forms, I think some lessons should be learnt in time.

Certainly no mad rush to absorb such licentious knowledge! With the indecently early exposure to such worldly delights, you can imagine how shocked Harry Huevos was to learn that thirty-year-old virgins actually exist here. Even forty-year-old ones.

And I don't necessarily mean a member of the clergy.


Friend : I hear there are virgins around!
Harry : What? Where?
Finding out that Virginal Vesper was... well virginal, Harry was horrified. I might as well have informed him a flying dodo had just landed outside the studio. As the phrase goes, we could have knocked him over with a feather.

Harry : She is a virgin?
Paul : Yes?
Harry : They still exist?
Paul : Why not?
Harry : With all the sex available back where I came from, I think virgins became extinct! Everyone was doing it in school.
Paul : Hunted till extinction with rare specimens placed in museums for all to gawk at?
Harry : Maybe!
Paul : Don't you think it's romantic to wait? To share the gift of innocence with someone special?
Harry : Wait? What the fuck for?
Paul : True Love Waits?

Since I'm quite the advocate of wild free loving, it's a little bit hard for me to convince him of the thrill of the chaste! Can't very well speak well of purity pledges and abstinence vows when I don't entirely believe in them either.

Always been a terribly randy fellow as well. Perhaps if I had known back then my ISO was available for mindblowing sex, I might have lost my virginity much, much earlier.

Though probably not at nine.

The Latchkey Kids of Miri

Like any frontier town out here in the East, Miri is pretty much run by the men.

Despite what you may think, the raging ideas of bra-burning feminism doesn't seem to have fully breached these blackened shores. With the predominant trades here being oil, timber and shipping - which requires more than its share of simple brute strength, men have the enviable upper hand when it comes to lucrative employment. Though such bright, bold ladies as Piratin Patty are steadily making inroads into these previously male-dominated milieus, even they would agree that their numbers are still few at the moment.

And yes, it is terribly intimidating to be faced every morning with an entire crew of burly sweaty truckers off in a faraway logging camp / offshore platform / shipping yard. Even I would be a little nervous.


Husband : I'm having an affair.
Wife : I'll pretend I didn't hear that. But yes, I am having one too.
So yes, the men go off to work and the ladies stay home to mind the children. Imagine the perfect 1950s family. With their errant husbands usually away for extended periods of time and the squabbling kids already sent off to school, these desperate yet utterly bored housewives are left to their own devices whiling away their time with daily mani-pedis, endless self-improvement classes and endless mahjong nights.

Don't be fooled by the saccharine-sweet montage of suburban bliss though. Just like the perfect Wisteria Lane with its hotbed of intrigue, this town is no different. Of course when I say mani-pedis, it means scathing gossip, self-improvement has more to do with dashing dance instructors and yes, endless mahjong nights come with lots and lots of booze.

Not exactly the sweet domestic housewives you were dreaming about.

Which makes for a lot of screwed-up latchkey kids in town.

Kid : Mommy, I need to go to school.
Mother : Oh darling. Mommy has an awful hangover again. Could you get a ride with the neighbour?
Kid : What about my lunch?
Mother : Just get the maid to wrap up something. I've got a class with Ramon later.
Kid : Ramon? The one who comes by after dinner sometimes?
Mother : Oh yes, mommy's dance teacher.
Kid : Didn't Ramon leave his clothes here this morning?
Mother : Well we do get plenty sweaty after. But nevermind about that. Shoo shoo, get to school.
Kid : Is Daddy coming home this weekend?
Mother : Well he has that other woman to worry about, doesn't he?

Mommy is no angel obviously. Neither is daddy since quite a few seem to have discovered minor wives and secondary families in whichever faraway postings they have been sent to.

And I'm not talking about a handful of examples. More like a truckload. The screwed-up suburban nightmare. Dead-beat parents who don't seem to be trying to hold their family together in the least. Damn. Trying my level best not to judge their shoddy parenting skills since until I have my own children, I wouldn't know how I'd react when faced with a similar situation. Hopefully I'd do better if ever given the chance.

But after being given a brief peek at how the other side lives, never have I appreciated my parents more. Perhaps Stepford perfection would be a bit too much but my parents tried their hardest to give my brother and I the best upbringing they possibly could.

And by God, I'm thankful.

Speaking Hokkien

For my brother and me, the main lingua franca for us at home when we were kids would be English. Dinner time conversations were usually carried out mainly in English with a smattering of Bahasa - our local native language - and our own Hokkien dialect as well.

Since my parents hailed from the northern state of Penang - where the Hokkien dialect is easily spoken everywhere by almost everyone, it was a dialect that was familiar to them both. The dialect itself originated in the Southern region of Fujian province, an important centre for trade and migration, and has since spread beyond the mainland borders to become one of the most common spoken Chinese languages overseas.

So as a side note, some of the patriotic Penangites speak it so much that they've even started making regular podcasts in the Hokkien dialect just to keep it alive.

Something my parents tried to do as well when they passed on the torch, so to speak, to my brother and me. At least that's what I clearly recall. Pretty sure my brother spoke in Hokkien back then!


Dammit. What do I say in Hokkien?
Lately however for some peculiar reason whether from lack of usage or severe cerebral concussion sometime in the past, my brother seems to have forgotten how to speak the dialect. Or at least he seems to have misplaced the ability to speak it conversationally.

Seriously. He speaks like an earnest foreigner trying to pick up the language. Stilted, forced and highly formal rather than the more informal speech the natives are used to. Simply put it would be the equivalent of a Shakespearean thespian painstakingly speaking to a regular English-speaking joe today.

Which we find simply hilarious.

Brother : O thou invisible spirit of wine! If thou hast no name to be known by, let us call thee devil!
Paul : So you don't want to drink?
Brother : Has thou taken leave of thy senses? If wine be the drink of love, then pour on!
Paul : Probably not as much for you then.

We can acquit my brother of any false pretense. I know what you're thinking but it's not a conceited affectation since my stolid brother simply doesn't participate in such shallow artifice. And he doesn't do accents. Much.

Wonder if he can even understand a Hokkien podcast nowadays!

The Big, Bad Penis

Battering ram. Spear. Missile.

Even a list of the sly euphemisms associated with the penis itself sounds ouch painful enough. Is it any wonder that virginal romance book heroines squeal in fright whenever one of the above comes knocking?

Heroine : Ooh, I’m not sure about this.
Hero : Hush, baby, you just need to relax.
Heroine : Relax! Are you mad? It’s too big; it will never fit!

By traditional convention, all good girls are brought up to fear the great, monstrous invader that threatens to tear their virginal walls to pieces, so to speak. Correspondingly, bad girls are forever damned for being much too free with their affections. So by expressing sometimes irrational fear of the penis the good girls therefore prove their untouched innocence, and therefore their inherent worthiness.


I've got a weapon and I'm not afraid to use it!
An analogy I found absolutely mind-boggling till a friend of mine actually admitted to believing the same. Ever since I've known her, Virginal Vesper has been scandalously co-habitating with her admittedly scrumptious boyfriend of many years - and yet so far there seems to be nothing remotely sinful happening.

At least according to Vesper who swears on her undefiled chastity!

Vesper : I'm a good girl, I am! I've barely touched... It!
Paul : It?
Vesper : Well... umm.. It! You know It!
Paul : You make the penis sound like some horrific sea monster.
Vesper : But It is!
Paul : Your boyfriend's delicious. I'd definitely play with his monster.
Vesper : With another man? He'd probably freak.
Paul : Sigh. So even with a sexy boytoy stationed by your side, you've only ever been up to 3rd base?
Vesper : I can't even go near it!
Paul : So you masturbate him with what? Two-feet-long chopsticks? Handy feather duster?

Guess some girls just can't rid themselves of the agonizing spectre of the painfully plundering penis.

There's always the fear of the unknown in all of us! Of course I guess gay men would be exempt from this particular rule since we wouldn't be quite as nervous around the phallus. As men ourselves, theoretically most of us would have had an intimate knowledge of the said member. Apart from slight, often negligible differences in size, shade and shape, certainly nothing wildly dissimilar from what we have ourselves.

As teenage boys are all wont to do, chances are we'd have thoroughly explored that particular part of our anatomy. The more curious fellows would have held it up to a measuring ruler at regular intervals. Even as adult males, we handle our penis on a regular basis. Apart from taking a piss of course, we have other more pleasurable pursuits to handle as well. Sometimes repeatedly. Oftentimes more than a couple of times a day depending on the extent of our libidinous urges.

So yeah, with such familiarity, the penis wouldn't be the big bad wolf that it would otherwise appear to be. Hell, most times I actually want to go around playing with other men's erections. Let's be frank, even a stolen glance gets my pulse racing.

Though the sight of it increases Vesper's heart rate in a most undesirable way. Apart from telling poor Vesper to just go for it with eyes closed hoping for the best, I find myself at a loss. Now how do we make the penis seem less intimidating?

Sugar Daddy

How are you? I am sugar daddy who looking for slim young man like you to be my sugar son. I am interested with you, and wish to offer you RM10,000 to exchange 5 times of sex from you. If you interested with it, do reply me.

Don't worry, I am decidedly not the author of that particular piece of purple prose.

Though having a sexy sculpted boy-toy lounging around the decadent halls of Netherfield would definitely perk things up, I don't think I'd be able to afford splurging on such frivolous luxuries. Yet. Who knows sometime in the future I might require the services of a hunky blond Chris Evans lookalike to help polish my silver.

Turns out some younger twink pals of mine have been getting such prurient offers online from the many predatory wolves stalking out there in the dark. Though I would have looked upon the proposition as a tremendous windfall, they don't seem to agree with my immoral ways. Bartering sex for an easy handout smacks too uncomfortably of prostitution for these junior prudes.


Won't you be my sugar daddy?
But exactly why is this so complex?

Basically you lie down, he gets you off and you get two thousand for each time. Talk about a win-wank situation. Rather than beat off alone in the privacy of their bedrooms as most boys are wont to do ( for free, mind you! ), now you have somebody who's willing to lend a hand. And you get money to boot!

Seriously, I don't see the downside in this particular arrangement. Certainly better than scoring only a mere pomelo for all your efforts!

Obviously if I had blessed with drop-dead gorgeous looks, I'd be trolling the streets as an ambitious money boy hustler. After all I've always been a sternly pragmatic fellow. Rather than run screaming from aspiring sugar daddies, perhaps it's more practical to properly evaluate their salacious offers to see whether it fits. Everyone needs a bit of sugar after all.